Cornell ’77: The Music, the Myth, and the Magnificence of the Grateful Dead’s Concert at Barton Hall

Conners (Growing Up Dead: The Hallucinated Confessions of a Teenage Deadhead) is an adept music critic who brings his knowledge and insight into all things Grateful Dead to this study of one of the band’s most legendary concerts, a performance at Cornell University in May 1977, “the show to give to someone who’s never heard of the Grateful Dead and wants to see what the fuss is all about.” Conners combines interviews with people who attended the concert, reporting about “the inspired, diligent work” of the Cornell students who made it happen, and a song-by-song analysis of the sometimes surprising set list (with a version of “Dancin’ in the Streets” showing the Dead “at their god-almighty funkiest”). Most importantly to both fans and historians, Conners details the work of crew member Betty Cantor-Jackson, whose live recordings of the Dead are considered among their best, and explains how her tape of the Cornell show became one of the most listened to and shared shows of their career. The tape itself was sold at a public auction, lost for a number of years in a barn, and rediscovered in amazingly good condition; it’s been released on CD so that new generations of Deadheads can hear what one fan quoted in the book calls “clearly the best-quality recording of one of the best performances of their career.” (Apr.)